The Master's Artist

What's the Point of Nature?

I just started reading this fascinating book Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. I've made it through Part I, where Louv illustrates the dramatic changes that have happened to nature in America and how the youth of each passing generaton have adapted to our natural surroundings.

Louv makes the case that children today know a lot about the environment—acid rain, recycling, waste, deforestation, endangered species—but never experience it.  Children do not interact with nature freely. Interaction with nature is now highly organized and monitored by adults. Children stay on the trail and within earshot of parents—they don't venture out into the woods on their own anymore.

This is causing a nature-deficit disorder in children. Louv does not consider this a medical diagnosis, but more of a common sense viewpoint. One of the most intriguing symptoms of nature-deficit disorder is that creativity dramatically drops in children who do not engage with the outdoors on a meaningful level. 

Louv recounts an interview he had with a fifth grader who, unlike many of her peers, interacted with nature on a deep level. She told Louv that she wanted to be a poet when she grew up, and that she had a elemental connection with the woods:

I had a place. There was a big waterfall and a creek on one side of it. I'd dug a big hole there, and sometimes I'd take a tent back there, or a blanket , and just lie down in the hole, and look up at the trees and sky. Sometime I'd fall asleep back in there. I just felt free; it was like my place, and I could do what I wanted, with nobody to stop me. I used to go down there almost every day....And then they cut the woods down. It was like they cut down part of me. (14)

Louv noted that the fifth grader saw nature as representing beauty and refuge. Her connection with nature was what connected her to her poetry, her art. There is a long history of nature in American poetry, from Longfellow to Whitman to Frost to Berry and Kooser.

Longfellow captures the point of nature, that it is beauty and refuge, in his poem "My Lost Youth":

I can see the breezy dome of groves,
The shadows of Deering's woods;
And the friendships old and the early loves
Come back with a Sabbath sound, as of doves
In quiet neighbourhoods.

It is in this sentiment that nature becomes the tool of the artist: when nature becomes so near that the memories of nature and of friendship and love are intertwined. Nature is the palette with which artist create, whether a painter like J.M.W. Turner or those from the Hudson River School, poets like those listed above or writers like Annie Dilliard. In nature artists can find the color and phrasing and cadence with which to create just as our Creator made all of nature.

Thomas Turner is the Donor Relations Program Manager at International Justice Mission and the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine.

Pinterest: Lust or Love?

I am a Pinterest novice. I have only a handful of items so far on my Pinterest boards. If you don't know what Pinterest is, it is a social network built around sharing what is worth sharing. You pin your interest. Sounds simple enough. Not much to think about.

What I am thinking about though, is what the endgame of Pinterest is. More specifically, what will my Pinterest begin to say about me?

What is worth sharing can really be classified in two different spheres:

A) I want to share what is cool, hip, modern, trendy, needed, craved, wanted, drooled over, special

B) I want to share what is beautiful, wonderful, artsy, handcrafted, embodied, worshipful, true

I think that Pinterest can really boil down to lust or love.

I wonder what my Pinterest will begin to say about how I view art. I am a big print fan. I could collect them and fill my wall with framed prints. I have prints of photos I have taken, a print of the soldier and nurse kissing after WWII is finally over, a print of Robert Frost's first book cover and some letterpress prints. I am always on the look out for some new prints, always wanting something new to catch my eye. This collector's mindset is good: it helps me to discern what I value as beautiful. The mindset is also bad though. Many days I just want something to want it. I feel a need for it. Like it is drawing itself to me. I start feeling like it will complete my room decoration, and at a deeper level, if my room is complete than I am complete. 

My identity can begin to be built around things. Even wonderful, beautiful, artful things.

Pinterest is not bad. That's not what I am saying. I am just warying of what I might do with it and how I could distort how I appreciate the value of art.

Art is valuable because it is wonderful, beautiful and true. That is a response of love. That is why I should pin it on my "board." It is so easy to slip down the road of lust though, to share something just to puff myself up and feel "in the know" or cool. That road is a fire that can never be quenched.

Here's to staying on the path of love, and pinning things to my Pinterest wall that will burn like embers with the slow beauty of love.

Thomas Turner is the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine and an adjunct lecturer at Nyack College. You can view his fledgling Pinterest boards here.

Two Books on Creating With Children

I consider myself a creative person. My wife and I have been thinking about how exactly we became creative people because we want to pass creativity down to our child.

Two books that have been really helpful in constructing a "Turner Manifesto for Creativity" have been The Rhythom of Family and The Creative Family by Amanda Blake Soule. Both of these books share how one family on a farm in Maine has woven creativity into every aspect of their lives, from making their own cough drops to sewing knapsacks for hikes.

In The Creative Family, Blake Soule lays down the foundation of her creative ethos. Children are to be engaged in creativity from the time they are born. What's more, she believes that children are naturally creative, and that part of parenting, for many of us, is re-learning the creativity we have lost when we became adults. That means making paper dolls, doodling for no reason and taking time to just be zany ideas and actions that we have been told are not "adult." There is a sub-conscious voice in adaults' heads that says "you shouldn't be playing with toy trains" or "it's weird for you to pretend you're a pirate" or "you look like an idiot dancing like Snoopy." This kind of thinking is simply not true, and Blake Soule suggests that if adults feel that they have outgrown creativity they should look to their children as teachers.

In The Rhythm of Family, Blake Soule takes creativity and places it into the rhythm of the seasons. What are creative things the family can do year round, from spring to winter? She includes relevant crafts and creative ideas for each month of the year, matched with reflections from her and her husband on weaving creativity into the changing seasons with their family. The ideas included are things like making an album to remember the year's garden harvest, walking barefoot in mud and easy sewing activities for children, like felting.

I encourage you, whether you have children or not, to pick these books up from your local bookstore or library and peruse them. Don't be afraid to be creative like a child!

Thomas Turner is the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine and an adjunct lecturer at Nyack College.

Thomas On Glynn On Berry On Williams On Place

Two days ago Glynn wrote about how place is of significance to poetry, and Wendell Berry's elaboration on the subject in his latest book The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford.

I happen to live near Rutherford. It is 4.6 miles away. It would take me 1 hr. 32 mins. to walk to downtown Rutherford, but I usually glide through Rutherford on the train into New York City.

I haven't been to Rutherford in a while. It's only one stop away on the train. I see the downtown shops as the train slows and hear the conductor announce, "Ruth-er-ferd" on the PA system. The people queue off and then queue on. It's a place where many commuters to the city get on and off. Sometimes they jam pack the train. At night, especially after Rangers or Knicks games, the business people are brown bagging beers and half drunk. I have had Coors Light spilled onto my shoes. It's not exactly William Carlos Williams' Rutherford. Who knows?

I don't really know Rutherford that well. I have frequented the Western store in Rutherford upon occasion. I went and watched Fourth of July fireworks there seven or eight years ago. But I haven't actually stepped foot on Rutherford soil in at least four years. I just glide right through it on the train, at least 30 times a year. I have visited it's sister city East Rutherford, where MetLife Stadium is, home of the Super Bowl bound Giants (I was there for the Giants vs. Jets game---that was an exercise in the identity of place if there ever was one: two home teams?). I haven't set foot in Rutherford proper in a while.

I suppose this is the long way of saying place is a tricky thing. I've seen shops close and open in Rutherford, seen the trees change color and the snow pile up. But this has always been through the window on a train. I know about popular restaurants that have opened, but that's just from the newspaper. I know a whole lot about Rutherford without actually setting foot there. Do I really know Rutherford then?

I would say yes. But place is on a spectrum.

I would say I know Rutherford less than William Carlos Williams, but more than Wendell Berry of Kentucky. He hasn't seen the latest bars pop up or the fancy condo complex they put next to the train station. Berry knows only of Williams' Rutherford, not the Rutherford I see once a week.

But I wouldn't say I know Rutherford. It's not my place. It's not the dust that cakes my shoes.

My place is 4.6 miles away on foot. A good distance, but not insurmountable. It's close. Maybe too close. There's no sense of adventure. It's closeness makes Rutherford just a place I pass to get to another place.

But I do want a couple new pearl snap shirts. Maybe I'll go check out the Western store soon. Then I can get some Rutherford dirt on my heels, and breath the lingering atoms of oxygen that may have once passed through Williams' lungs.

Thomas Turner is the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine and an adjunct lecturer at Nyack College. He is most certain that William Carlos Williams would be a Giants fan. Go Big Blue!

Three Tips to make Creativity Playful

For Christmas this year we tried to stock up on artistic toys for our little one. Now she can venture around our living room, shaking maracas, playing a drum, thumping on my djembe, banging on her new xylophone, pretending she's cooking with her pots and pans or drawing in crayon on her big easel. We want her to be able to learn how to make music, draw and cook through exploration, not us sitting her down and trying to drill her in the proper ways to do things. That can wait another ten years.

For now we give her the freedom to explore her creativity in her own ways, and to her heart's content.

Which gets me thinking: do I allow myself to explore and just be creative for creativity's sake?

Or do I get bogged down in the proper way to write a poem, the proper way to write an essay, the proper way to blog?

I think I fall more into the latter.

I have three tips that I use to make my creativity playful. These are by no means original, but it helps to be reminded (and remind myself!) of ways to be playful.

Tip #1: Stretch Yourself - you can make your creative activities playful by stretching yourself. Make creativity a game by stretching your art into a genre or sphere you have zero experience or knowledge in. I do this by drawing illustrations or illuminating some of my poetry. I have zero drawing skills, yet it helps me see the themes in my poetry that I don't see myself at first glance, and it adds a color palette that I can use in my editing that I would have never noticed without drawing.

Tip #2: Freewriting (or free-painting, or free-drama, etc.) - I tell my students to do this every semester in College Writing 1, yet I so often fail to do it myself. Just giving yourself ten minutes to do stream of consciousness art will open up new avenues of art to explore. And it's a great cure for writer's block!

Tip #3: Make Art a Game - learn how to make the tasks of creativity a game. The poets who venture into TweetSpeak's Twitter Parties for Poetry (fellow The Master's Artist writer Glynn Young is involved in this) are especially good at this. They have fun by tweeting poetry lines to each other and then editing the whole group's content into a single poem. You can replicate this type of game with painting (have four people with four canvases and each paint one quadrant then pass it along) or drama (improv!) or writing (Mad Libs!). You can always make up your own game. You're creative, remember?

Over the weekend, set aside a few moments to try some of these out. I would love to hear about your experiences with these suggestions in the comments.

Thomas Turner is the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine and an adjunct lecturer at Nyack College.

A Childlike 2012

As I looked back on the movies and books I really enjoyed this year I noticed a common theme: they were made for children and young adults. From the final Harry Potter movie to The Muppets to The Hunger Games, these all had children included as part of the intended audience.

While I may have enjoyed young adult films and fiction this year, I must confess that my own writing and art isn't always the most accessible. Ever the English major, I sometimes relish a bit too much in big words and obtuse phrases. Sometimes the theme of a work can't be accessed if the language and phrasing is distracting. What makes The Hunger Games such an amazing series is that it is able to deal with harsh dystopian themes in a way young adults can relate to.

As I move into the new year, I am resolved to be more genuine and accessible in my art. As much as I would love to emulate the dense poetry, arthouse cinema or verbose fiction I often read, I think it will be an intriguing experiment next year to ratchet down the ambiguity and obtuseness next year and see how I can push themes, metaphors and imagery to the forefront.

Thomas Turner is the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine and an adjunct lecturer at Nyack College.

Trees of Life

While watching Terrance Malick's film The Tree of Life one has time to wonder about the world, a rare feat for a movie in this day and age. There is ephemeral light pulsing from the screen like metallic paint on a canvas. In Hopkins-like beauty and grandeur, as one watches intently, patiently, the anxiety that comes with following the action and plot found in so many films fades, and the stillness beckons us to enter the deeper story of all creation.

In the stillness of the film, the vibrations of creation abound. The light shines in the darkness. It never goes away. It is in the vacuum, searching, caressing, hoping that we would but look up to the heavens "where God lives" and change our ways.

But we are shadows. Fallen. We are of dust, of death, of decay.

Watching the film, in this meditative state, I felt convicted. It was becoming confessional. I felt the rhythm of Eliot's "Choruses on the Rock" being projected onto the screen, the images matching the words:

O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.

The father (with a little "f") in the story, Brad Pitt's character, toils endlessly to amass some sort of wealth or prestige, trying to grow his job and his patents like Adam working out his many days with the slow toil against the ground, the weed and the thorn. He fails.

And he begins to fail his kids, all boys. They catch on. The oldest gravitates toward the coiled rage of his father, and it weighs on him. It begins to control him. He paraphrases Paul's exasperation at his own sinfulness. He begins to fight the darkness in his soul. He lusts after the musical talents of the youngest boy. Could they be Cain and Abel?

As the tension builds creation stops swirling around them. The cosmic picture fades. This family becomes the first family. As if all the world rests on one family. As if all the world leads up to one moment, one action, one desire, one sin. How could a God of love lead us to this point of despair? Where has he gone?

In the end we must have faith. That is the radical message of the movie. We must have faith. There are no easy answers. During this Advent season, what do we have but faith? How could a child be God? How could any one grow up amongst the darkness of this world and remain sinless? This leads us to the precipices of understanding, and we rely only on our faith. We must believe the light will overcome the darkness.

This is why we put lights on our Christmas trees. It is a symbol to us, that one day the tree will never die, the flower never fade, the light always shine brilliantly. It points to Christ, our tree of life, the human who will never die, and gives this immortality to us.

I cannot help but think of Eliot's "Choruses from the Rock" again, and his explication of our purpose, and our right desire, to fight the shadows, and participate in the light of Christ. It is the same call for everyone, for it is the deep roots of the gospel. It is the story of all creation, calling to us, and especially to artists:

The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless
Joined with the artist's eye, new life, new form, new colour.
Out of the sea of sound the life of music,
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings,
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.
The work of creation is never without travail
Light
Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.
O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.
We see the light but see not whence it comes.
O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!

May we all become visible reminders of the invisible Light.

Thomas Turner is the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine and an adjunct lecturer at Nyack College.

Creating for Community

I have been involved in compiling a prayer book for my church. We want to use it starting during Lent (I know, thinking ahead!) to have the church start praying together. I have been focusing on our mission statement and choosing scripture that resonates with the hearbeat of our church. After laying the foundation of scripture I'll write short prayers that direct and guide the community through praying about cultivating love, truth and compassion. While I have enjoyed this creative process, it is not without some difficulty.

Most of the time I create for myself and then share with others. It is a process of moving from the deep stirrings of my mind or heart and creating an artifact that I then share (if I think it is good enough for other eyes to see).

This project is the opposite. I'm standing on the outside, creating something for a whole group of people. Eventually, this project will stir my mind and heart as I pray along with others.

There's something to be said for creating something you are going to participate in yourself. It removes you from the situation somewhat. In his book The Art of Curating Worship, Mark Pierson describes how it is hard for someone who curates a worship service to actually participate in worship during the service, because the focus is on how well it functions within the community and not on participation.

That's something I will have to tackle as I participate in something I am creating for others. I hope I'll be able to participate in something I created without seeing all of the errors or misunderstandings or things that are left to be desired.

Have you created something for a community?

Were you able to use the artifact you created?

How were you able to separate your role as creator from your new role of reader/viewer/listener?

Thomas Turner is the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine and an adjunct lecturer at Nyack College.

Artists Advent Project

I wanted to take my usual Friday morning slot to announce a project that fits right into the heartbeat of The Master's Artist community: the Artists Advent Project.

Artists of all kinds (amateurs and professionals), participate by giving away at least one piece of their own original art work (any form of media/art) to the world through internet links during the Advent Season (Novemeber 27-December 24) as a Public Domain Dedication, or by using a Creative Commons License, (where some copyright can be maintained. Such as crediting the creator, limiting derivative works, or prohibiting monetary gain from one's donation).

WHAT? you say. Gain nothing from producing and sharing my own art? I don't keep my rights to it? Huh? That sounds reckless or even nuts. What if someone takes my donation and makes a billion dollars from it?

The Artists Advent Project (#ArtistsAdventProj) is a mission of goodwill to freely share art with the world, and for posterity.

It's a radical project to celebrate Advent, the Coming of Christmas, artistic and creative expression, and goodwill to men through creativity. To make a true difference, and brighten a bit more the world now, and for years to come, we need as much help as possible.

Will you please participate?

You might already have something to give in your stock pile of digital photos. That's the perfect place to start. (Clicking either licensing links will give you code to add the copyright specifications or no copyright title and logo to your work.)

Once you have links to your work share them on the interwebs with the hashtag #ArtistsAdventProj. Think of this as an Open Source venture. Just run with it.

Ideas for artistic gifts:

• Photography
• Photography of art in various media (i.e. fabrics, cut paper art, found object art, sculpture, etc.)
• Illustration/Drawing
• Multimedia
• Music
• Film
• Poetry
• Literature

I hope that you join in with this project. Use the hashtag so that we can all see each other's work in the project when you post it to your own blog or website to share with everyone. Happy creating!

Thomas Turner is the Senior Editor & Publisher of GENERATE Magazine and an adjunct lecturer at Nyack College.

Confronting Darkness with Art

Yesterday I was given the opportunity to participate in Ramapo College's Human Trafficking Week by leading a group of students in the spiritual center through a novena I had written to confron the darkness of sex slavery with the hope of prayer.

Step back to a few years ago and I lived in blissful ignorance of human trafficking. I thought slavery was something that disappeared in the 1800s. Then some of my friends encouraged me to come hear a speaker on human trafficking in the New York City metro area. I was completely overwhelmed with the extent of the problem. Slavery had not gone the way of the dodo bird like I thought. Instead, it was alive: deeper, darker and affecting the world in unimagineably sinister ways.

Stunned at the evil that was in our very midst, I chose to react.

Now I'm not a social worker.

I'm not a lawyer.

I'm not a non-profit hero.

I write and teach and think. That's what I get paid to do.

So to confont the darkness, I chose to react with art.

A few of us were joining a network of churches, non-profits and faith-based organizations to do a prayer walk through the Flushing neighborhood of Queens to confront the darkness of human trafficking with prayer. I was privileged to write a novena for the prayer walk. It was the only way I could confront the overwhelming darkness and evil of what was happening around me.

And last night, as I lead a group of college students in that same prayer, I realized that I am no better nor worse at confronting the darkness than I was three years ago when I wrote the novena. I haven't learned the intricaties of the criminal justice system or left my job to do grassroots advocacy. I understood, last night, as I drove home from the event, is that I will always have art to confront the darkness. I will always have the ability to put words onto paper, to read them, to share them and to hopefully see them grasp the hearts of others and push them into confrontation with the darkness of this world.